market research is unfair

I wish there were magical fairies who wrote thesis chapters whilst I procrastinated watching crappy TV and writing this rant about how unfair market research is.


Tonight's TV show that I'm ranting about is "Recipe to Riches" where I'm watching these people get opinions from random people on the street about their ideas for marketing their food.

Source

I am annoyed about a few points about their selection processes:

1) Whilst they are appearing to get "randoms" to answer their opinions, there is selection bias because there is a) free food - not everyone likes to take free food due to allergies, preferences etc, and b) a TV crew - younger people might be more willing to participate because they can get on the tv etc.

2) There doesn't appear to be written consent taken to answer their questions. Sure, it's just asking some harmless questions about what they think of this new potato bake. But do you know how many hoops we researchers have to jump through to get ethics in order to ask people a few simple, harmless questions about health related issues?

3) There is no end of money being thrown at the idea of making new supermarket items, whilst innovating medical research is struggling to get off the ground and up-and-coming researchers are seriously reconsidering their careers because of the lack of job and income security.

These are three points why I think market research is unfair. And now I shall go back to writing my thesis.